


Utterly Undone

by icarus_chained



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Aftermath, Comrades in Arms, Ficlet, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-28 23:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set at the end of <i>Game of Shadows</i>. John and Simza, in the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Utterly Undone

**Author's Note:**

> Just a tiny thing I've been meaning to do for a while.

They found a quieter place, fetched up together on some stone seat in some marble corridor, shoulder to shoulder in useless finery, their faces blank and bruised, watching officials and dignitaries rush back and forth before them. Simza's hair had come loose in glittering tumbles around her tear-stained face. John didn't really remember what had happened to his gloves.

"... Is this what victory feels like?" John wondered, an odd hitch of something a little like laughter. A bubble of something like humour, if perhaps so much darker. He was, he thought distantly, still in some shock.

Her smile flickered beside him. A brittle, almost savage flash. "The victory of Pyrrhus, maybe," she murmured, with rubies shining in her ears and her brother's blood on her hands. "The victory of ..."

Her voice hitched, faltered. Broke, almost softly. Not cried out, it seemed. Not hollowed completely just yet. 

John closed his eyes, pressed them tightly shut for one long, aching second. And then ... he reached out, curled his arm around her shoulder, and tugged her into his chest. Much as she had done for him, in that train car, her fist coming up much like his, clenching in his shirt as she buried her face and her grief in his shoulder. Near-silent, now, the racked shudders of her sobs almost soundless, felt more in the shaking of his own chest.

"Victory," he murmured softly, eyes painfully dry, and held her close while the shock broke open, and they grieved for fallen brothers.


End file.
